ATAK (WinTAK) Tutorial: How to Download Better Imagery

[Music] hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so today we're going to be taking a look at how to download better more accurate and more recent imagery satellite imagery for wintec and attack applications you can also use this imagery in google earth if you're so inclined or any other mapping software but to do this today we're going to continue sticking with our example here of the smithsonian in washington dc as you can see here i've still got the imagery overlay turned on from our last video so if you don't know how to overlay internal like building maps overlay those onto an atac or wintac map just go ahead and check out that video and that will show you how to do that but the reason that we're downloading this imagery is to make this map a little bit better so the first thing we need to do to download better imagery is actually abandon attack because we're not going to download the imagery through wintec we're going to download it from the internet so let's jump over there alright so here we are on the usgs data distribution service website for the bulk download application tool i cannot think of a more dull and boring sounding name than this particular produ distribution service website for the bulk download application tool i cannot think of a more dull and boring sounding name than this particular product but this is going to be very necessary moving forward if you're going to download more than just one image so if you haven't done so already you can create an account with the usgs it's free it just requires an email they ask for some more information but they don't really check on if you fill it out correctly or not so just go ahead and create an account that's going to be very necessary to use this bulk download application tool so if you go ahead and download this make sure that you choose the the correct uh version for your system otherwise it will make you want to pull your hair out because it won't work right so uh or it'll just partially work and you won't get the full benefit so if you have a 64-bit system make sure you get the 64-bit platform all right so once you've downloaded this you can run the installer it's just an exe file it's a fairly straightforward installation process i'm just going to skip right over because it's really not worth covering but to download the imager we're going to jump over to another website c cess i'm just going to skip right over because it's really not worth covering but to download the imager we're going to jump over to another website called the earth explorer so let's jump over to the usgs earth explorer and this is the main website as you can see here it's just a map of the united states and it's got a lot of stuff here don't worry we're going to go through all of this in in great detail so the first thing you need to do is really understand that imagery is not a simple thing imagery is is very wide ranging it can take many different forms and there are lots and lots and lots of different kinds of imagery and many different ways to download it this is just one way that we would recommend because it's just really easy to do comparatively so with all that in mind when you're downloading imagery you need to be very very very specific what kind of imagery do you want where you want the imagery how much of it do you want from a particular area and when do you want it and there's a million other parameters that you can fill out to get imagery so let's go through that process with one single type of imagery for the area so the first thing we need to do to do that is zoom l out to get imagery so let's go through that process with one single type of imagery for the area so the first thing we need to do to do that is zoom in to our particular target area this is zooming on in let's see here we are and i have zoomed in as far as my mouse will let me here on over top of the smithsonian national air space museum so once you've got this nice and centered in your field of view here we're going to go over here now ignore this top part for a second we don't really need it for right now this is for more more advanced type stuff and we're going to go down here and tell the tell the system tell the database where we want this image to be taken so what you can do is you can choose all these different kinds of tools to to pre-define an area you can choose different polygons you can do all kinds of stuff but we're just going to click use the map and that's why we centered our map on this particular building because now it just took a it just took the corners of where the display was looking and that's good enough for us we don't that's that's a nice uh that'll give us a good sample here you can also type in each corner manually but who wants to do that the next th us we don't that's that's a nice uh that'll give us a good sample here you can also type in each corner manually but who wants to do that the next thing you're going to want to do is tell the system when when do you want this imagery taken so i have chosen the dates january 1st 2010 to 2021. now normally this would would give you a lot a lot of images but for us for this very small area it's not going to give us a lot it's just going to give us a handful to work with more than what we need but it's better to have more when you're downloading this type of stuff and also what you're going to want is to click cloud cover right here you're going to want to change this cloud cover to be zero to like 10 percent that's that's sort of the industry standard if you have less than 10 percent less than 10 cloud cover for your image it's good enough good enough for government work at least right and if you happen to be searching for a much larger area right down here this will save your life by clicking result options changing results per page to 250. if you're downloading more than say 250 images this is what i would choose but we're just going to download a few for today so once you've got y 250. if you're downloading more than say 250 images this is what i would choose but we're just going to download a few for today so once you've got your criteria you've told this database where you want images taken from you've told the system when you want them taken from and you really told them sort of what right here with the cloud cover but we really need to specify what kind of imagery so the next step is you can click data sets here or you can click it up here at the top either one will take you to the same place and this is where you're going to choose what kind of imagery you want so we're not going to cover all of these it would take us at least an hour to cover all of these different types of of imagery and their uh and their subsets here so we're just going to pick one and the one we're going to pick is going to be aerial imagery high resolution ortho imagery that's the only one we're going to want to download and that is the only one that will come up in our search here so you can leave this expanded closed whatever it doesn't work it doesn't matter and then now you now that now the search is complete right you can put in additional criteria if you know what what imag oesn't work it doesn't matter and then now you now that now the search is complete right you can put in additional criteria if you know what what image number you want you could put that in there but this is just for a simple simple explanation uh once you've got that selected whatever imagery you want click results and it's going to think for just a second and there we go now this one only gave us five images five images of this particular area now we'll show you what these tools mean along the bottom here very very quickly we're gonna blaze through that because it's not super important but up here at the top what you can do is this will probably probably be like this click show result controls this will help you out a lot and just click show all footprints from current page there you go that will tell you that will show you the footprints of all of these images that were taken since there are five i'm guessing that each of these squares was imaged twice and this was imaged once that's just my guess from doing this quite a bit but you can go ahead and leave that turned on or leave it turned off i'm going to turn it off for now to show you what each of these little markers along ea u can go ahead and leave that turned on or leave it turned off i'm going to turn it off for now to show you what each of these little markers along each individual image means and here in your search results these are actual this is every image that was taken by the satellite the raw image right so the first one shows you the footprint clicking that will tell you the footprint of the image it will tell you where it was taken on the earth and if you wanted to get rid of that for a second you could go to the next one which will show you the actual image so this is the actual image it will allow you to browse and then zoom in it's not going to be terribly high quality at this stage it trust me if i were to download this image it will be very it will be a lot more high quality later but just during here in the browse function it's not really that high quality and then these next these next two icons aren't super important this one will show you it will allow you to compare a couple of images that overlap this next one here will allow you to see the metadata from it which is important if you're trying to do some math using this imagery which we will show in a later video some of the mat to see the metadata from it which is important if you're trying to do some math using this imagery which we will show in a later video some of the math you might want to use when looking at this imagery and then these next three are are kind of useful so the first one here this one with the little green arrow pointing down that will allow you to download just this one image if you if this is the only image you want you can click here and download that this will allow you to not use that weird data download tool that you had to install your computer like i mentioned in the beginning if you just need one image that's all you need right there but usually you're going to be downloading a lot so that's where you're going to need to click this which will allow you to add it to your bulk download and as you can see that turned it green now the bulk down the bulk download tool which is linked to my account shows that it will help you download this all at once and this last one will help you delete this particular image from your search results so remember how i said that if you've got a couple hundred of these images uh changing the search results so 250 would help you well that's because s so remember how i said that if you've got a couple hundred of these images uh changing the search results so 250 would help you well that's because up here at the top you can add all results from current page to bulk download and that's exactly what we want as you can see you turn them all green this is very handy because once you start getting into the hang of doing this imagery thing you're going to be downloading hundreds of these images so there we go that is how you're going to download the image and once you've got these all selected we're going to view item basket now like i said this is kind of an rkx system but it once you click that button it will bring you to this page and it'll see right here it says bulk download five scenes uh what you're going to need to do is see it'll even tell you that you need the bulk download application uh and then click start order now here's the frustrating part for a lot of people that get stuck on this step so i'm going to show you you can select bulk download i'm going to put right here smithsonian yep spelled that right for once so you can try to click this button right here all day long it's not going to click for you being a governme ithsonian yep spelled that right for once so you can try to click this button right here all day long it's not going to click for you being a government website you have to expand this list and this will show you the name the numbers the serial numbers of all of the images you're trying to download once you can see them on your screen like this now this button turns into a dark blue and you can actually download it so now as you can see it says order smithsonian has been submitted and it will give you an email address for uh for for the account that you used to sign up with your your account here so now we're done now we're done with the the the internet part now we need to jump over to that bulk uh data tool so when you first start the bulk download application it's going to ask you for your username and login this is to sync this particular program with your online account all right so once you're in the very first thing you're going you're going to want to do before doing anything else is make sure that you have your installation directory set correctly this is super important because you don't want to end up filling up the wrong hard drive with terabytes and terabytes of imager irectory set correctly this is super important because you don't want to end up filling up the wrong hard drive with terabytes and terabytes of imagery so you to to do that you go click settings and click destination directory settings if you click that it will allow you to choose the directory that you can download this imagery to so once you give it a few minutes once again it's a government server so it takes it a few minutes to to sort of recognize what's going on and that hey there's some imagery i need to download once you've given it a couple of minutes go up here to file and open order that is if it isn't already opened if you open this bulk download application tool usually this this form here will open up automatically but in just in case it doesn't that's how you get to it also i have found that the bulk download application needs to be started in administrator mode so if you are don't have a minister of access to your computer or it's acting really weird re close it out and restart it again in administrator mode and it will uh it'll it'll work just fine for you so as you can see right here that right there is my one image one uh sort of order that's what they call it a l uh it'll it'll work just fine for you so as you can see right here that right there is my one image one uh sort of order that's what they call it a bulk download order that i made from the internet and now this compute this application is talking to the server and now it's trying to download these images so to to start that download make sure that this is the right one you want click select order and it will load all of the images up here in their serial numbers for uh for for download now here along the bottom of the screen i feel like i should mention the uh the size of this kind of thing so a lot of times you're not going to know how big this file is going to be until you click the download until you've made the order right so let's say that my my hard drive is filling up here and i need to figure out um if this order is going to be too large or not you can look down here at the bottom of the screen as you can see i have this hooked up to it to a external hard drive and the hard drive itself has 315.8 gigabytes of space and as you can see right here this this this box along the very very bottom of the screen is labeled as remaining size 286.84 megabytes now that does not mean u can see right here this this this box along the very very bottom of the screen is labeled as remaining size 286.84 megabytes now that does not mean that the the space on your drive it means how much of this imagery still has remaining to download right and it'll tell you the speed right here so you can see that that all of that adds up to 286.4 so these are all the images that are waiting to be downloaded and you can to start the download of course you can go over here and click begin download and it'll start it will do three at a time and um once one of them is done it it will uh it'll it'll go to the next one as you can see this is going to take quite a while especially for downloading hundreds of images but the reason that you want to do the bulk download applications two reasons one if you're downloading more than one image it's handy and two you can let it run all night long like while you're sleeping or not using your computer which is what we end up doing here a lot of times we'll just let the image download download you know terabytes and terabytes of imagery whatever you need and it'll be there when whenever you come back to it also this bulk download application tool wi terabytes and terabytes of imagery whatever you need and it'll be there when whenever you come back to it also this bulk download application tool will restart a download if some image gets corrupted because it's coming from a government server and because of a bunch of other technical stuff is kind of hard to understand sometimes these images get corrupted when they're being downloaded so this application will double check to make sure that they're accurate and they're okay and if they're not occasionally don't worry if you see one this is one there's there's like one or two errors don't worry about that when it gets to the end of the download it will retry those files and then retry them until it can download them successfully so that's a very handy tool it's just fire and forget come back to it when it's done so we're gonna gonna let this download and we will come back to it once it is done all right so here we are we are back the the bulk download application gave us this nice little notification let us know that downloads are complete we're going to click ok and now we can exit the application we don't need to keep any of this stuff around all right so our download is complet mplete we're going to click ok and now we can exit the application we don't need to keep any of this stuff around all right so our download is complete we're all shut down on the downloading that's all done now we're back in atac so what we need to do from here is go to our handy dandy import manager click import files and navigate to the place that you saved this particular imagery and this is what the files are going to look like they're going to be in a zip file no need to extract them or anything atec is really good about importing files so don't worry about it just select all of the ones that you need and it will bring them in then you click open and it will start loading them in now i've already loaded these in and it took forever because i downloaded the entirety of washington dc uh when i did this first time so that took quite a bit of time that's why there's a lot of these lines and things overlaying so once you import these it's going to take a little bit of time now once they're imported you've got to turn them on so from there you go to your maps and favorites right it's not the overlays you'd think it'd be an overlay but it isn't it's going to import this imagery as im here you go to your maps and favorites right it's not the overlays you'd think it'd be an overlay but it isn't it's going to import this imagery as imagery because the imagery is what's called a geotiff file this is a file that is is that is a geo-referenced imagery file so a tag is going to recognize it and it's going to know exactly where to put it and that place is in favorites and maps all right so here in maps and favorites this is the menu you're going to see now these are all of the image sources that you're going to be able to pick from normally in attack or wintac and it will stream these online that's where that's why you can zoom to any part of the country and this will auto populate see how it's auto updating well it's because i'm online well with the image resource right here you're not going to be using this particular tab so you can either turn it off turn it off or leave it online i like to leave it off as you can see here i've already got a couple of couple of areas saved in my in my cache here but what we're really going to do is click the imagery tab now once you click the imagery tab you've got a few different options here i'm going to turn that off for now it's oing to do is click the imagery tab now once you click the imagery tab you've got a few different options here i'm going to turn that off for now it's just a random kmz you're going to get the normal blurry background image that atack is known for right but once you start zooming in then you're going to have some options here so let me zoom right on into the smithsonian as you can see there's my image overlay that helps me know where it's at now i've got a couple of choices here i can choose geotiff 30 centimeter or gift of 20 centimeter remember how when i was downloading these images they look like they kind of overlapped well they did in this particular area so let me choose 30 centimeter here let's see what we got i zoom on in i might have to padlock it to get it to turn on and there we go that's exactly what i had to do turning the padlock on will force this image to display even if there are other options so so just like that so that's how you can get that to work and now let's go ahead and choose something better something with a smaller resolution right 20 centimeter imagery let's choose the padlock that instead look at that it's it's a lot better imagery this is very very a smaller resolution right 20 centimeter imagery let's choose the padlock that instead look at that it's it's a lot better imagery this is very very good imagery for what it is and as you can see here from from the same uh from that tutorial earlier how i showed you how to overlay this map this map is now off well that's because now you're using more accurate imagery and as you can see this particular image is is very close to nader you can actually see that it is it is with way less than one degree off from nader because this uh this light pole here you can see the shadow but the actual pole is a dot so this image was taken almost straight down at the ground i can if i uploaded the metadata i could tell you exactly what it was but um yeah this is how you can update your maps as say you're trying to to throw an overlay on a map that isn't on the map because it's a new construction well this is how you do it and that's pretty neat because then you can start using these other things as well and if your area isn't like a sensitive area like washington dc is like over here across the river we actually have 10 centimeter 10 centimeter imagery over here across the river um here in these like washington dc is like over here across the river we actually have 10 centimeter 10 centimeter imagery over here across the river um here in these green squares let me turn these these images off and let's just use the 10 centimeter imagery let's see here padlock that one man that is that is some really nice imagery 10 centimeter is about as small as you can go in the civilian world and as you can see that's pretty good not quite will smith enemy of the state good but if i switch by using these lines on the road here as reference actually let me see if i can find a building a building for reference yeah here we go so check it out this is a building with a little parking area and i'm going to go to 20 centimeter imagery see a little little worse not not too bad though you can still make out cars and stuff and then 30 centimeter imagery you can see a lot more a lot more blurry 30 centimeter is usually what google earth is going to be giving you but you can go all the way down to 10 right here as you can see that's pretty pretty good so yeah that's how you upload better imagery for google earth it takes some time obviously it takes a lot of resources i'm going to be using up a lot so yeah that's how you upload better imagery for google earth it takes some time obviously it takes a lot of resources i'm going to be using up a lot of resources um i'm downloading this better imagery because you can see now i can go into this overlay and now match these corners up like i did when i first drop this overlay in and then this this image will be a lot a lot more accurate and then you can export that image and then that that's your map right there so hopefully this was helpful for everyone uh sorry if it took a little bit longer than normal it's just trying to explain all this stuff will help help help you understand how the whole process works so please leave us a like comment and subscribe below and make sure to check out our other content we've got a lot more of these atac videos coming out and we've got our of course our normal s2 underground content as well so thanks for watching and we will see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade you